01 May 2025 ・ 20:00 ・ Club Wakuum
Gonçalo Almeida Double Bass Solo
“In the present album, Gonçalo Almeida questions the future of the double bass and of music in general, inventing a sound that has not yet been heard. Like many important discoveries, his invention required more imagination than equipment: « my setup is simple », he says, « just an amp and a volume pedal». Listening to the seven tracks of this album, one also imagines a subtle interaction between the amp and the bass: slight movements that change the position and distance of the resonator (the body of the bass) from the speaker to create controlled feedback. We also imagine something like a gymnopédie with the volume pedal, to modulate a distortion that enhances the bowing stroke, the pizzicato resonance and several mysterious preparations. The improviser has the advantage over the traditional composer of hearing in great detail the specificity of the sound he invents. This live listening pushes him to other lines that he would not have imagined in the silence of a working room. Obviously, the new sound of the double bass discovered by Gonçalo Almeida has directed his music towards unexplored paths.The trio of timbres born from the combination of feedback, distortion and acoustics led him to lines and energies that he had not yet developed in his previous albums. Clearly, the music on this album is something else.”
(Pierre Bastien)
Steve Bates / Christof Kurzmann
Christof Kurzmann: ppooll, voice, saxophone, clarinet, rubber band
Steve Bates: electronics, guitar
Christof Kurzmann and Steve Bates come together in a new duo where improvisation across texture, timbre and dynamics meet experimental song form. Having met in 2004 in Winnipeg, Canada at Send + Receive: A Festival of Sound which Steve co-founded and where Kurzmann performed with My Kingdom for a Lullaby, the two quickly became friends. They have gone on to collaborate as part of the larger, Black Seas Ensemble. This is the first time the two work together as a duo.
Kurzmann’s background in composition, improvisation, free jazz ensembles and electro-pop with a wide range of collaborators including Burkhard Stangl, Ken Vandermark, Margareth Kammerer, Martin Brandlmayr, Elisabeth Harnik, Fennesz, Mats Gustafsson, Susanna Gartmayer and many others informs his work here as well. Moving easily from composition to improvisation and back again with electronic and acoustic instrumentation. Bates brings his passion for noisier forms to the duo alongside his work as an artist, film soundtracks and environmental sound. Forming the Black Seas Ensemble as a shifting group of collaborators exploring music through the aperture of auditory hallucination, Bates’ sound work often takes various forms as music, performance, installation and moving image works.
